Ride the Pine
by movieholic
Summary: The rise and fall of hockey's undeniably greatest enforcer, Erik "The Shark" Lehnsherr. A prequel to a future X-Men escapade titled Offside.
1. April, 1977

**April, 1977**

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There was nothing very remarkable about the day that Erik Magnus Eisenhardt was brought into the world. Well, aside from the minor fact that he was _technically_ supposed to have been born as a Lehnsherr instead, but his mother was feeling particularly petty and spiteful toward his father that April morning. It didn't help that her firstborn arrived in a shanty _somewhere_ in Nowheresville, Poland instead of her home country of Germany _or_ that her husband was held over at his late night shift at the steel mill, and barely arrived in time to see his son's head forcing itself from between her bloodstained legs. His immediate passing out at the horrific sight also may not have done much to bolster her already sour mood. So, in the end, he was born as an Eisenhardt instead of a Lehnsherr.

When Jakob was finally prodded awake from his impromptu collapse, he was handed his wailing, pink-splotched son. The little boy, wrapped in nothing more than a threadbare sheet, hiccuped as he slowly calmed himself down in the comfort of his father's strong arms. The newborn stared up at the tearful man, the pert nose that belonged to Jakob wrinkled in confusion underneath the wide and wondrous gray eyes of Edie, as the soothing baritone voice of his father wafted over his head in a single promise: " _Ich werde immer lieben und schützen sie_ , _mein Sohn_. _Immer_."

I will always love and protect you, my son. Always.

Jakob then handed back his soothed newborn to his exhausted wife, placed an affectionate peck atop her sweat plastered hair, auburn wisps tickling his nostrils, and vowed the same in turn for her. With trembling fingers, Jakob reached into the right pocket of his rumpled trousers, and pulled out a sterling silver necklace that he presented to his languid child. The pendant at the end of the chain swayed, but Erik had no reaction aside from a sleepy blink. Jakob shared a smile full of warmth and love with his wife, before he carefully clasped the gift around the little one's neck.

" _Nie vergessen_ , _wer Ihre Leute sind, Erik_."

Never forget who your people are, Erik.

Edie tiredly nuzzled her son's downy scalp with her red-tipped nose, reaching out with her free hand to clasp her husband's calloused one in her own. Pale gray met with light brown before they looked down together at the little boy that they had created. They smiled as a gaping yawn gripped their son, resulting in a tremor that jerked at his listlessly pawing hands. They watched as the handcrafted pendant shifted with the movement until it was nestled directly above Erik's steadily beating heart.

Outside a dog barked and whined, birds sang and tittered in the trees, and sheep bawled as the sun continued to rise above their heads. Stray beams of sunlight filtered between rain **-** rotted planks, and made the Star of David lovingly placed around Erik's neck glint in it's warm illumination – an equal match to the twinkle in his parents' proud and joyous eyes.

" _Alles wird gut_ ," was whispered amid swirling dust motes.

" _Alles wird gut_ ," was parroted back between slats of filtered sunlight.

All will be good.

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	2. September, 1978

**September, 1978**

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It took nearly a year and a half before Jakob was able to fulfill his wife's greatest wish: relocate their family back to West Germany. It took nearly the same amount of time to explain to Edie that they couldn't just pack up and leave, especially with a young son and another child very eager to announce itself to the world as soon as possible. Jakob also couldn't help insist that it wasn't _his_ idea to live in Poland, but their respective families together as they fled Nazi-occupied Germany in hopes to survive the atrocious Holocaust. It didn't especially help that the Invasion of Poland had happened soon after, and that their war-ravaged countries left them barely escape with their lives, much less with a penny to their name.

Jakob worked tirelessly every single day, and most evenings, reducing and smelting iron ore in a blast furnace with the knowledge that his dangerous work was for a flimsy check that hardly covered the cost of food. On occasion, when he didn't feel as though he would keel over from exhaustion, he would offer his deft skills in mechanics to the local Poles for extra currency. It also didn't hurt that his heavily pregnant Edie also sacrificed her time at nearby bakeries for a few extra _złoty_ on the side.

So, it was with zero fanfare that the Eisenhardt-Lehnsherr family gathered their meager few belongings and boarded a train that would take them southwest to Edie's hometown in Heidelberg. They quietly arrived in the rural city with the sun warm at their backs and only the soft sway of fig trees to greet them. They placed their travel-worn cardboard boxes atop chartreuse colored grass, and stared up at their stone and timber home with a mixture of exhaustion and pride.

" _Sie haben es geschafft_ ," she laughed, one calloused hand held to chapped lips as the other rested on the large swell of her stomach.

You did it.

" _Nein, wir haben es getan_ ," he whispered into the kiss he placed to her temple.

No, we did it.

" _Nein_!"

" _Gute Arbeit_ , _Erik_!" Edie praised the wriggling toddler in his father's arm. His round belly peeked from underneath his tattered shirt as he pitched forward to pat her cheeks with chubby, dirty hands. She placed a kiss to the little fingers as he giggled at the feeling.

" _Ein Wort_ , _schon_. _Und in seinem Alter_! _So smart_ , _unsere Jungen_." Jakob bristled with pride as he chuffed Erik underneath his plump chin.

One word, already. And at his age! So smart, our boy.

Edie supplied a happy a smile in return, before the edges of her lips turned down fiercely. She placed both hands on her stomach, feeling it harden as a spine-tingling ache rippled from her back to front. It wasn't particularly painful, but Edie knew that it wouldn't be long before she would be changing her tune. She reached forward, grabbing her husband's bicep in a white-knuckled grip.

" _Es ist Zeit_ , _Jakob._ "

It's time, Jakob.

" _Aber wir haben nicht holte einen Namen_!" He cried out protest.

But we haven't picked a name!

" _Ich beschlossen_. _Ruth oder Maximilian_. _Keine Argumente_. _Wir gehen müssen_!"

I decided. Ruth or Maximillian. No arguments. We need to go!

Ruth Anya Lehnsherr was born on a cool, September evening with blue eyes and auburn hair. There were smiles and kisses, and no passing out during her first night in the world, and when everything settled down and the screams of a mother in labor were nothing but a painful memory, she was lovingly adorned with a silver bracelet with a pendant that was identical to her brother's own.

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	3. July, 1982

**July, 1982**

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Erik meets Magda Maximoff with a wood-handled hammer in one hand and a rusty slab of sheet metal in the other. The fig trees don't provide nearly as much shade as he had hoped they would, and the sun mercilessly beats down on his exposed neck as he cranes his head down to study his two objects. The sheet metal is taller than he is, sitting down cross-legged in his front yard, and he struggles to examine it when he still has his father's large hammer clutched in his left hand.

He doesn't miss sight of the strange little girl skirting the edges of his peripheral, but he opts to ignore her until he can figure out just exactly where to aim the head of the hammer. He picks out a particularly rust-marred spot, closes one eye like he's seen his father do in the shop, pokes his tongue out the side of his mouth, and swings his left arm with all the strength a five-year-old can muster.

The thin slab of metal topples uselessly to the side, not even close to being in contact with the hammer, and Erik lets out a huff of annoyance. There's a peel of laughter to his side, and he narrows his gray eyes at the source: the girl. He scowls, drops the hammer to the grass, and pushes himself to his feet. They're bare, his shoes left inside, and he wiggles his toes in the coarse grass.

"Why are you laughing?" he demands in his native German.

He steps forward when she doesn't reply, her laughter coming harder and her face as red as the back of his neck, and he nearly steps on the jagged ridges of the metal. She's too busy gasping for breath, so Erik studies the new girl with reluctant mirth; her laugh _is_ quite infectious. She's his height, if not just a tad shorter, with thick brown hair that is braided down to her waist. Flyaways frame her round cheeks, and curl around her pink-tipped ears. She has blue eyes that remind him of his sister's, and an adorable gap between her two front teeth. There's dirt smudged across her freckled cheeks, and grass stains on her dress, which Erik thinks might be too thick in this kind of heat.

He steps closer and thrusts out his hand.

"I am Erik," he announces.

She finally catches her breath, and grasps his outstretched hand like she's seen the grownups do. "I am Magda," she replies in Polish.

Erik thinks he may like her.

"Can we be friends?" Erik asks. He understands and speaks Polish as well as he does German, but he decides to stick to his original language because it seems she does as well.

"Sure," she replies with a roll of her shoulders.

And because they are now friends, Erik fishes in his pocket and pulls out a coin that is nearly bent in half. He presents it to her with a grin, and announces that he did that all by himself with his daddy's hammer. She plucks it from his fingertips, and closes her small fist around it tightly.

"I don't have pockets," she explains when he glances down at her closed fist.

Erik doesn't care. They're friends now.

She points with her free hand to the pendant he wears around his neck.

"Are you a Jew?"

Erik almost feels as though he should be frightened by the question. He's heard the stories of his grandparents and the war and the Holocaust, but he's five and he doesn't understand. He knows that when he acts brave, like when he kills a spider for his sister Ruth, that his mother affectionately calls him Max after her own father.

He doesn't understand that either, so he simply nods and asks if she's one too.

She nods enthusiastically.

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	4. December, 1984

**December, 1984**

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"My momma is sick," Erik announces in a puff of white, frosty air. It's getting dark out, and the outdoor lamps are few and far between where they live.

Magda stills beside him. She knows sick. Her brother Erich got sick once, and even she had been sick on occasion, but what Erik means is _sick_. She pushes out her lower lip in a sympathetic pout, and gently pats the top of his hand.

"I'm sorry, Erik," she murmurs. She doesn't quite know what to do with her hands after that, so she reaches up and fiddles with her Hanukkah gift from Erik: a carefully handcrafted necklace made of nuts and bolts strung on twine. Her father had refused to let her wear it until it had thoroughly been sanitized, and she had yet to take it off since.

"She couldn't help make _latkes_ ," Erik adds, and his young voice is gruff with the injustice of it all. He tugs off a woolen glove, and clumsily rubs at his eye with the back of his frozen wrist. He recalls how his mother barely had the energy to lift her bony hand to point at a mixer. How frail and listless she looked when he had set it aside and instead grabbed a brush to tame her thinning hair. He recalls how tender her skin was to the touch, and how she hissed in pain when he carefully tried to place her hair underneath her favorite handkerchief.

"Ruth doesn't get it," he says with a shake of his head. He's just shy of being two years older than her, and yet he feels like the age difference is massive when it comes to how they're coping to the inevitable loss of their mother. He curses in Hebrew, something he had once heard his father mutter to one of the various doctors that shuffled into their home.

"I need to go," Magda says apologetically. "It's the last night. You understand."

Erik does. He needs to get home too.

They both stand, and share a quick hug. "Shalom," they whisper into the shell of each others frost-nipped ears before they part on their respective ways home.

Erik isn't scolded for arriving after dark. Instead he is greeted with a tired smile, and outstretched arms. He settles himself in between them, ignoring the brittle bones that wrap around his frame. He reluctantly pulls away and aides his mother towards the dining room table. The room is dark, getting darker by the minute, but when the first of the eight candles are lit, it brightens the room with a soft and warm hue. He catches sight of Ruth fast asleep on the couch, and he hasn't the heart to wake her. Edie follows his stare, and smiles wanly. She reaches out, hands thin and shaky, and lovingly touches the silver pendant before she caresses Erik cheek.

"I love you," she whispers in Hebrew rather than German.

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The next morning, the room cast in shades of blue and gray, is cool and quiet. It's broken by intermittent whispers, and heavy footfalls. Erik rouses from sleep, casting a weary eye to where his sister was curled on her side of the bed, before he slowly shirked the sheets from around his legs and slipped from the bed. His father is home, early if the lack of bird calls are anything to judge by, and there is someone else there too. A man, possibly two.

Erik dropped to the floor, hissing as the cold wood flooring kissed his knees, and crawled towards the bedroom door. He risked a peek underneath, unable to catch anything but a trouser-clad pair of legs. There's crying, low and broken by sniffles, but it's unmistakable. A bed creaks as a heavy weight sits on the edge of it, and an unfamiliar man's voice apologizing in blunt German. Another asks if more time is needed, and Erik can't stand to hear any more.

He pushes himself into a seated position, back pressed against the door, and lean legs pulled to his chest. He wraps his arms around himself, shaking in the cold of the room, and he can't quite stifle the sob that escapes his lips.

Ruth wakes, asks what is happening. Erik shushes her and tells her to go back to sleep.

She does, and he cries and cries until he too passes out.

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	5. June, 1990

**June, 1990**

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It had been five years since Edie lost her battle with cancer. Jakob struggled in the aftermath, unsure on how to handle two grieving children and a full time job when all he wanted to do was curl up at the bottom of a bottle and drown. He tried to steer away from his children on the worst of his days, feeling his mixture of despondency and grief would overwhelm them as he felt it did him. He hadn't realized that the "worst of his days" were nearly all days, and that the lack of attention to his children was nearly as harmful as the opposite. When the thought finally did occur to him, he simply just tilted his head back and guzzled down another bottle.

But he didn't want to think. He didn't want to picture any loving pecks placed to temples or calloused hands clutched in his own. He didn't want to think of his son, of Erik, and how the boy excelled in any physical activity or how his face lit up when Magda was around or how he couldn't contain the jounce in his step when he brought home yet another trophy and proudly presented it to his lethargic father.

Or of Ruthie. His darling Ruthie, with her mother's hair and her feisty attitude and her knack for baking. And of how intelligent she was! Paper after paper brought home and pinned up by her big brother, each with a stylized "1" or a glittery sticker of praise, showcasing her brilliance.

No, Jakob didn't want to think of his wife's last night spent in an empty bed, gasping for breath as her children slept in the adjacent room and her husband was working, always working, and not there when she closed her eyes for the last time – spindly fingers stretched out on the opposite side of the bed, reaching for a husband that was never there. So, he drank and he drank and he drank until those pervasive memories were nothing more than mere hazy tellings of another man's life.

Hours later he is prodded awake by his youngest. She offers him a smile and tugs on his hand.

 _That's right_ , he thinks, _Erik's practice_.

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Erik is breathless with laughter. His stomach aches, his legs throb, and his lungs burn with exertion, but he finds the energy to laugh with joy as he chases Magda through waist high grass. Dusk is settling in, but the somber orange glow of the sun still casts it's light in the valley of two hills. The darkening sky is alight with fireflies, the air smells of freshly turned soil, and Erik's ears ring with Magda's playful shrieks.

"Slow down," he calls out, but he can't stop giggling and he can't quite catch his breath. "I had practice today, remember?"

"Poor baby!" Magda coos over her shoulder as she twists away from his grasp.

"Come on!" He pauses and rests his hands atop his knees. "My papa didn't pick me up, so I had to walk here."

"You ran, you walked, and now we're running. So what?" Magda teased, but she did at least stop a few yards away. Erik pants, and Magda giggles. "Poor Erik! Now he can't catch me."

The challenge is obvious, and Erik never backs down from one, so he darts forward and his sneaker-clad foot instantly catches on a rock. He tumbles forward with a yelp, and disappears into the tall grass. Laughter floats over him, and then a grinning face does.

She plops herself next to him, stretching out on her back and kicking her bare feet at the faint outline of the moon. Erik wheezes, but says nothing. A soft breeze tickles the hairs on Erik's cheek, and then a feather light kiss follows suit. He pulls his head back in shock, blushing as Magda beams. She pushes herself to her feet, demanding he catch her.

He does.

She bids him goodnight with another peck, and he walks home feeling like he's walking on clouds. But the sight of the police in his yard stops him cold, and brings him to earth in a crash. A bedraggled officer steps forward, a silver bracelet clutched in his hand. There's a smear of red on it.

Erik falls to his knees, and he thinks that he doesn't know how to laugh anymore.

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	6. July, 1990

**July, 1990**

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There was over a month of government men and women squabbling over how best to take care of an orphaned preteen. They thought he should be immediately placed in a foster home where he could interact with children his age, and be looked after by a husband and wife that were happily married, stupidly in love, and still alive. The latter being key.

Erik found that he didn't have much choice in the matter. He didn't have any surviving members of family, that he knew of, and there was nothing keeping him in Germany any longer; Magda's father had accepted an old job back in Poland, and she was whisked away as quickly as his family had been.

They eventually placed him in the care of an overly jubilant family in Killarney of County Kerry, Ireland. Erik found that he couldn't stand them. They were too happy, too loving, and he wanted nothing more than to be cloaked in darkness and to be left to grieve without bright smiles or twinkling eyes. It certainly didn't help improve Erik's mood when he realized that his foster brother was the biological child of the Fassbender's, and that he had a sister Ruth's age living there as well.

And then Erik felt like that fact didn't matter anymore. He no longer cared that his mother wasted away or that his father was drunk when he crashed the car or that Ruth was only eleven and that all he had of the three of them was a sterling silver bracelet with an attached Star of David pendant. He didn't care that Magda returned the bent coin he gave to her the day they met on the night she left, demanding he return it to her when they found one another again.

Erik didn't care about the damned rules either. He didn't care that Michael was cheeky and sweet and much bigger than him, and that none of that meant he should launch himself into a blackout rage that exploded outward into a flurry of fists and spittle, because he did it anyway. He didn't care that he shouldn't sneak out in the middle of night, even if all he did was run and run and run, until he couldn't breathe and he couldn't see anything but white spots.

Michael, despite being Erik's apparent punching bag, found that all Erik needed was an outlet for his rage and grief. So, Michael became his outlet. He followed Erik out the first story window, and ran next to him over rolling hills and back again. He introduced a soccer ball to the other boy, and they kicked it back and forth until the sun peeked over the rooftops. They played their own version of rugby, that turned into impromptu bouts of wrestling or increasingly violent boxing matches. Erik, it turned out, was a supremely skilled fighter.

There was usually no speaking involved, save for the occasional muttered curse or under-the-breath trash talk, and it suited Erik just fine. Michael had once tried to get Erik to join him in the garage for a heavy metal thrash session, but Erik found it excruciatingly painful to listen to. But during rainy nights, when it was coming down too hard to even attempt going outside, Erik found that he preferred listening to screeching and electric guitar twanging than be stuck in the house with too cheerful foster parents.

And then one night, Erik was introduced to hockey. There were only a few basic channels on the television set, but one was full of sports and Erik found that he could tolerate the company of others so long as they were talking at the TV and not at him. He had settled himself on his stomach, legs crossed at the ankle, and he watched the set with morbid fascination as two burly men beat the living daylights out of one another on a floor made of ice. Michael, perched on the couch, informed Erik that these were top-something countdowns of sport brawls.

Erik looked down at his scabbed over knuckles, and then back to the men senselessly punching each other, and he couldn't keep a grin from pulling at the edges of his lips. That was something he could do, and do well. He wanted to know more. He _needed_ to know more about this sport.

Michael, face marred by a concerned frown, studied his foster brother. He knew that the little German boy spoke four languages very well. He knew that he was gifted in athletics. He also knew that something about hockey particularly gripped him...but he did _not_ know what the hell that smile meant.

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	7. February, 1991

**February, 1991**

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Erik toured his new foster home with a disinterested air. He couldn't remember if this was his eighth or tenth, and he didn't much care either way. The one thing he did care about was nestled safely at the bottom of his knapsack. At the moment, all Erik wanted to do was blow past his latest foster father and get down to the nearest lake before they all thawed out for Spring.

"Is good?" The heavily-accented German was both bitter and sweet to Erik's ears.

" _Es it okay_ ," he retorted back and relished the surprise on the older man's face. Had the new foster parent not read past the words "disruptive," "aggressive," and "violent" and gotten to the less interesting facts about Erik? It certainly would have explained why he kept calling him Mr. Eisenhardt instead of his preferred surname of Lehnsherr. The teen vowed to legally change it the first chance he was able, but until then he just snapped it whenever someone called him otherwise.

The older man, Werner, offered Erik a curt nod and informed him in his native tongue that lights out was no later than nine in the evening. He eyed the teen up and down once more, and shuffled away when he was finally satisfied by whatever he was looking for. Erik snorted at his retreating back. As if he was going to leave the ice just because the sun went down.

Erik turned on his heel to take in his new bedroom. He didn't take stock of anything other than the fact that there was a bed. It was all he would need the room for, he figured, seeing as he planned on spending the majority of his time practicing on the lake.

At the thought of the lake, Erik made quick work of sliding off his knapsack and undoing the leather straps. He flipped open the top, and sifted through a handful of clothes and basic toiletries until he pulled out the first object he was eagerly seeking: Ruthie's silver bracelet. He clutched it tightly in his hand, touching his closed fist to where his own pendant rested on his chest, before he carefully set the bracelet back into the pack. He then reached back in and pulled out a pair of worn, poorly handcrafted ice skates. They were ill-fitting and bought used, but Erik was still proud of them.

He had worked hard to scrape together enough money to buy them for himself. It had taken months of shining shoes, walking dogs, and the occasional theft to get the minimal amount he needed in order to purchase them. It had turned out he was still a few _marks_ short of what he needed, but the shop owner took what little Erik had to offer, claiming they were never going to sell anyway.

Erik held the pair in the air, studying a scuff on the heel of one. He carefully placed the right one atop the bed, licked his thumb, and vigorously scrubbed at the mark until his skin burned from the friction. He studied it once more, annoyed to see it was still there. There wasn't much to be done about it anyway, and he was wasting precious time, so Erik carefully put them back in his knapsack and slung the bag over his left shoulder. He walked out the front door without so much as a grunt to indicate where he was going.

It was with great restraint that Erik didn't run the distance to the lake, and it was only because he didn't want to tire himself out before getting the chance to pull his skates on after so long. So, he paced himself as he walked along snow embankments and bare trees. He shivered underneath his wool sweater, but opted against pulling out the jacket he hastily stuffed into his knapsack.

Finally, after several minutes of enduring achy teeth and wind-whipped cheeks, Erik came upon the frozen lake he had seen when he was being dropped off at Werner's home. Erik gleefully slid down a snow-covered slope, and quickly pulled on his skates. They were big and they were ugly, but they were his and now he could _finally_ teach himself to properly skate on ice.

The next few days were filled with injuries ranging from the minor chapped lips and bruised bums to skate blade gashes and sprained fingers. But it didn't take Erik long to pick up the basics. And when he felt comfortable enough, he incorporated a stick into his personal training process. Then as winter began to fade away, he threw in a round stone too.

When spring swooped in, Erik thought his fist-fighting skills were getting rusty again.

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	8. April, 1995

**April, 1995**

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They, whoever the mysterious _they_ even are, had apparently decided to wait until Erik was eighteen before discharging him from government care. Erik would have preferred to have been allowed to leave when he had turned sixteen, but something about his "overtly aggressive nature" set loose in Germany didn't seem to sit well with the higher ups. And while they were hesitant when he was sixteen, they were sure and swift on his eighteenth birthday.

He was only a legal adult for thirty-five minutes before his most recent and final foster mother burst into his room and declared him no longer a charge of the state. Ursula, a heavyset woman with entirely too much make-up weighing down her eyelids, offered Erik a firm handshake and well wishes on his new journey.

At least Erik assumed that was what she had meant. Her butchered English was as bad as her Russian, and she was _from_ there. Either way, he accepted whatever she had attempted to say, packed his handful of belongings into his pack, and didn't spare a look back as he left.

That afternoon, Erik adjusted his canvas knapsack over his left shoulder for the third time. It wasn't particularly heavy, he didn't own much, but he realized early on that his shoulders grew faster and broader than the rest of his lanky body, and as a result had to constantly loosen the leather straps before he burst right through them.

It didn't matter, though. He had finally arrived at his main destination: a recreational sports building that had recently added an ice rink. Erik couldn't feel happier about the prospect of playing hockey all day and night, free of charge, whenever he wanted. The thought made him giddy with excitement, and he was quick to take the stairs to the main building.

Erik made a beeline to what he assumed was an information center, and impatiently tapped a chipped fingernail atop the ceramic counter when the woman on the other side didn't acknowledge him. He shifted his weight from foot to foot before he finally cleared his throat.

"Excuse me?" German first. It was his most likely bet seeing as they _were_ in Germany, but it was just his luck when she pouted and replied back in French. Erik rolled his eyes in annoyance, but switched to English. "Where do I sign up for hockey?"

Her pencil thin brows furrowed in confusion, and Erik resisted the urge to strangle her with the phone cord that was set ever-so-temptingly close to his elbow. "Hockey," he repeated, injecting phlegm into his voice in the hopes that it sounded French enough for her dainty ears.

It worked. Her green eyes lit up in recognition, and she twisted in her seat to point at a set of double doors behind her. Her peach colored lips produced words that he didn't quite grasp, and her hands start making wild motions in the air. It took him a minute, but he finally realized that she was giving him directions. He shook his head, and readjusted his knapsack.

"Never mind," he muttered back in his native tongue. He made his way towards the door, and internally hoped that he would be able to find someone that spoke at least one of the four languages he knew before he got too turned around and started throwing punches in frustration.

It takes him over half an hour to realize that the rink is actually in a separate building behind the one he's wandering in, and only the sight of blindingly white ice keeps him from seeing red. He grins, hoists his knapsack a little further up, and catches sight of a man carrying a clipboard. He figures anyone carrying a clipboard at an ice rink must be in charge of something, so he strides forward and thrusts his hand out for a shake.

"Erik Lehnsherr," he states as the man bewilderingly clasps the hand. "I'm here to play hockey."

The man looks instantly relieved, and he visibly sags under Erik's confused stare. He shakes the board in his hand, and motions towards the empty rink.

"We needed one more member," he explains in clipped German. "I almost had to go and tell the boys that we wouldn't be forming our own recreational team."

Erik's previous grin returned in full force. "Well, I'm your man."

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	9. March, 1997: Part One

**March, 1997**

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"Break's over! Back to work!"

Erik perked a bemused brow at the order. A drop of perspiration swelled at his temple, before it finally released its hold on the fine hairs it clung to and slowly made its way down his jaw; he fought the urge to rub at the ticklish feeling it left behind.

"Had we stopped?" Dirk asked in a low voice.

Erik smirked at the joke, but didn't bother to reply. Instead, he tugged on his cotton shorts in a fruitless attempt to air out his sticky thighs before he heaved a sigh, and got himself into place for a set of push-ups. His tenth set of fifty that day, and counting.

"You should work on your legs," Dirk pointed out as he lifted a dumbbell to his chin and back down again. "You'll have the thickest upper body on the ice, but it'll be useless if you snap an ankle, little chicken."

Erik huffed as he tried to regulate his breathing in the midst of his set. "They don't pay me to skate around, twinkle toes. I'm the-" he grunted as a muscle in his bicep twinged. "Muscle."

"They don't pay us at all," Dirk said with a wet snort.

Erik opened his mouth to reply, but snapped it shut when a shadow fell over the two.

"I don't believe vocal chords are a muscle you need to worry about training, Erik." The voice, smarmy and accented in English despite being said in German, belong to Schmidt.

From his position on the floor, Erik continued to pump out his set without bothering to give Schmidt the satisfaction of seeing the annoyance on his face. Instead, he pushed through the remainder of push-ups he had left before resting his weight on his forearms in the plank position.

"No words now, I see."

"I try not to waste precious breath on your ears, Schmidt," Erik ground out as his arms trembled under the strain of his weight, and his abdomen burned in protest.

Dirk's resounding laugh was quickly covered in a pathetic cough. Schmidt cast him an icy smile before looking down at Erik once again. "I suppose there really isn't need for words when you're already down at my feet, is there?"

"Well said," Erik retorted sarcastically as he shifted his weight to his right forearm. He turned on his side, left arm placed awkwardly on his waist, and glanced up at the other man. "Anything else or do you still wish to hear yourself speak?"

This time Dirk was unable to hide his laugh, though he valiantly tried through another coughing bout. Erik hid his smirk by tucking his chin down to his chest, but Dirk was caught outright. Schmidt turned to the other blonde smoothly, teeth clicking as he forced a smile across his face once again.

"Dirk, I suggest you get some water for that nasty cough you have. Otherwise, I may have to bench you again, and then you'd really _would_ be living up to your nickname of Dusty Dirk."

"That's not very fair," he grunted, but he was quick to place the dumbbells back on the rack and leap out of Schmidt's eyesight. It didn't have to be said that _dusty_ was a term used for players that saw very little ice time, and were typically horrible when they did.

Erik watched as his teammate fled with hooded eyes. He was getting very tired of Schmidt thinking he had any real clout in the arena. The man was only there because his father owned the building in which they practiced in, along with several other buildings in the city, but that was beside the point.

"So, where were we?" Schmidt turned on his heel and looked down at Erik. He placed a hand in the pocket of his carefully ironed trousers, and pretended to be deep in thought. "Ah, that's right. It's rumored that this weekend's match may have some very important scouts in attendance." He glanced down at his shoulder and removed an imaginary piece of lint. "So, it occurred to me to let you know that your usual machismo would need to be highly turned down. They're there to see _real_ players with real skills. They're not there to see a goon. Is that understood?"

Erik, who had by now switched to his left side, ground the back of his teeth in irritation.

"Perfectly, Herr Schmidt," Erik mustered in an exaggerated German accent in the other man's native English. "I live to follow your orders."

Schmidt frowned in his annoyance, but managed to say, "See that you always do," before turning on his heel once more, and leaving the training room.

* * *

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	10. March, 1997: Part Two

**March, 1997: Part Two**

* * *

"I think my nose is broken. Is my nose broken?"

Erik tilted his head back and scrutinized Dirk's swollen face. "I think so, but I can't really tell." His own left eye was swelling spectacularly well, and his right was so bloodshot that he couldn't tell if he was literally seeing red because it was gushing from Dirk's nose or his eye was that badly damaged.

"How about me?" Erik and Dirk watched with twin disdain as their fellow teammate, LaFlamme, settled himself down in between the two. As always, he was untouched and unmarred by the match's events thus far, and would remain that way so long as Dirk or Erik were on the ice. He offered the men an easy grin as he took a gulp from a plastic bottle of water. "You're looking good, Lehnsherr."

Erik snorted, then winced. "French bastard."

LaFlamme pouted at the insult as he capped his bottle. "You Germans. Always so quick in your contempt!" He unsnapped his helmet, shook his long mane of thick hair, and sighed. "Although I must praise you for your brute strength."

"Damn right," Dirk muttered as he pinched the bridge of his nose.

"Lehnsherr, off the pine! You're up!"

Erik closed his aching eyes, hung his head, and let loose a weary sigh. Then, with a sharp inhale through his sore nose, he squared his shoulders and pushed himself off the bench with his stick. "Wish me luck," he grunted over his shoulder as he clambered over the wall.

Before he could skate off, however, Dirk darted forward and snatched the sleeve of his jersey. Erik jerked with the motion, trying to steady his thin blades on the ice. He leveled his teammate with a flat expression until he released his grip.

"Sorry," Dirk huffed, "I just thought I should remind you of who's in attendance tonight."

"How could I forget," Erik said with a roll of his eyes. The motion caused a lance of pain through his head, but it wasn't anything he wasn't used to.

"Don't let Schmidt get to you," Dirk insisted. "You deserve to go to the show as much as any of us." A sharp shout from a referee stopped him from adding anymore, but Erik got the gist.

"The _show_?" Erik teased as he began to glide backward. "You couldn't sound anymore American, Dirk."

"You should hear my English," Dirk retorted back as Erik finally made his way to his position. LaFlamme looked at the blonde in confusion, and Dirk shrugged. "What? I do a great American accent."

"You're an idiot," LaFlamme said with a shake of his head.

"You're French. So, I win."

There was a dull thud as the rubber puck was dropped to the ice, and then the usual crack of two sticks crashing into another in an attempt to snatch the puck. There was grunting, and yelling, and blades singing over smooth ice. The usual cacophony of a hockey game in motion. But then there was a sudden lull, an odd hush as a derogatory slur was shouted over the din like a bolt of lightening before a threatening storm.

And then there was absolute mayhem.

Dirk was up and over the wall before LaFlamme had time to process what was happening.

Lehnsherr, face streaked wet with bright blood, sharp teeth gnashed together so painfully tight that a muscle in his jaw jumped and pulsed under the strain, had another man by his neck with his bare hands. He pulled one free only to close it into a tight fist and repeatedly smash it into the other man's unprotected face.

"What did you call me, you son of a bitch?" Erik's voice was dark and thunderous as he mercilessly pummeled the other man until he couldn't keep his legs underneath himself. Even then, Erik followed the man down to the ice.

Forget what Schmidt had said about scouts and machismo, Erik was going to serve the abominable man a sound thrashing and give the crowd a taste of one reason why they had started calling him The Shark.

* * *

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	11. August, 1998

**August, 1998**

* * *

Despite his cool demeanor, Erik couldn't help the slight wobble of his knees as he carefully stepped out onto the slick ice. The black socks and thick padding he wore hid his trembling legs, but he still made sure that he schooled his expression to one of indifference; internally he was relieved that they weren't paying him any attention.

It didn't take much more than a cursory glance in their direction for Erik to know he wasn't going to get along very well with his new teammates. He had a sinking feeling that they would be able to see how nervous he was, and that they wouldn't be full of support and advice. They were all highly experienced players, and he had only just been recently recruited because of his deft skill with his fists. He was nothing more than a punching bag for their rivals and a bodyguard for themselves.

They taunted and jeered at one another, ignoring his rather lackluster appearance behind their tight-knit gathering. He felt only slightly better when he didn't fall flat on his face after gliding up to their party. He had been skating for most of his life, but "most of his life" didn't amount to much when he was only twenty-one and most of the others were hitting their thirties.

Erik's fledgling good mood petered out when he accidentally shouldered one of the other men. The man, ridiculously short and stocky, made an about face with a practiced ease that came with years of skating. He looked Erik up and down with nothing short of disgust before snarling: "Watch where you're going, Grocery Stick."

Erik frowned in confusion. He was fully aware that the other German was calling him a name, but he didn't quite understand what that particular insult was even insinuating. He reared his head back and questioned, "What?"

The man grinned at Erik's evident confusion, and elbowed a fellow team member in the chest. "Looks like we've got us some fresh meat." To Erik he said, "I _said_ to watch where you're going. Last thing this team needs is another goddamn bender."

"Are you insulting me?" Erik demanded. His gloved hands jerked at his sides. The other men may have very well been speaking in the same language too, but it was obvious that there was a whole other language barrier for Erik to cross; their hockey lingo far surpassed his own. Either way, Erik wasn't one to take an insult lightly. If ever.

The man mimicked Erik in a high-pitched one before he grinned. "We don't need any pussies here either. We have enough on the side to keep us sated."

The other men laughed. Erik just smirked humorlessly, his lips twisting in personal mirth. The smaller player, too preoccupied with chuckling and nudging in all his jocular glory, hadn't noticed that Erik had started to shirk his mitts one by one. The others, however, let their laughter slowly trail off in mild confusion.

Trask, the gold-embroidered surname on the smaller man's back, turned round in the near silence. He glanced down at the ice, where Erik's mitts lie on either side of his body, and then back up to Erik's tilted head. He perked a brow in amusement. "You _really_ think you can start a fight that won't end with you eating your own teeth?"

Erik offered nothing more than a slight shrug as he pushed himself a little closer. "I'm counting on you trying."

And, with nothing more than a grimace of exertion, Trask did try. Erik easily dodged the fist, and countered with a bare-knuckled one to the center of Trask's unprotected face. He could feel his bones crackling, but nothing more than a familiar ache rippled up his wrist as the smaller man buckled under the blow.

Trask grabbed blindly for the front of Erik's jersey, but he neatly stepped out of the red-handed reach. Instead, he looked up into the stunned faces of the others with an expected look.

He blinked once.

"Well?"

* * *

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	12. September, 1998: Part One

**September, 1998**

* * *

Erik carefully flexed his right hand against the muscle of his thigh. His thumb protested at the movement, the partially torn ligament sending a bolt of pain down his arm and to his elbow, but he was more than positive it was something that he could easily wrap up himself. He didn't want to get the team's medic involved – again. As it was, he was more familiar with the physician's life story than he was with any of his team members. And the whole lot of them have been working together for a little over a month.

"'Ey up!" A large hand clapped Erik's broad shoulder. He tensed under the weight, but he could easily pinpoint that brusque accent out of any crowd. "Quit your brooding, Lehnsherr."

Erik lifted the corner of his lips into the semblance of a smile, and shook his head. He wrapped his left hand around a little tighter around the bottle of Beck's he was nursing. "I told you – that's my resting face."

Unuscione, called Unus for practicality's sake, grinned at Erik's dry tone. "You've done nothing but rest your face." He motioned towards a small group of their team heading towards the bar's front exit. "And the point of a pub crawl is to actually go to _different_ bars. So, c'mon! New York is full of alcohol, and maybe we can pour enough into one of the women here and get her to wipe that face off your look."

Erik turned his head to face Unus, one brow perked in amusement and his lips twisted in mirth. He released his hold from the bottle, and used it to pry the other man's death grip from his shoulder. "I think you should be cut off," Erik drawled as he watched Unus nearly collapse without the support. He caught the disdainful eye of a leggy brunette, and switched to German. "I also think you should refrain from speaking of American women in English. They can understand you, you know."

Unus frowned. "I thought they spoke American," he grumbled, but at least it was also in German. He sniffed, and blinked sleepily at Erik's face. In English he crowed: "Fine. Fine, we'll go! But at least have _some_ fun for Christ's sake!"

Erik nodded dutifully, and held up his bottle for good measure. "I'll be fine, Unus."

The larger man returned the nod, and clumsily picked his way towards the front entrance. Erik watched from the corner of his eye. He didn't much care for the majority of the men he had been rigorously training with, but Unus was one of the less grievous ones.

When the other man finally managed to leave without incident, Erik heaved a sigh and turned his attention back to picking at the wet label of the bottle. He picked it up, narrowed his eyes at it, then took a long swig. It tasted awful, but it was expensive and he paid for it.

He leaned back on his stool, jerking when he forgot it didn't have a back to it, and he nearly slid off entirely as a result. He sighed again, took another sip, and grimaced at the bitter ale. It wasn't that he _wasn't_ trying to have fun, it was just that he didn't much care for New York drinks, food, or people. Then again, he didn't much care for any of those things on a daily basis.

"I thought that boorish man told you to have fun," a Polish accent murmured by his side.

Erik's body stiffened in shock. He couldn't help but widen his eyes as he slowly turned to take in an almost long forgotten figure. She was taller, obviously, and the cute little gap between her teeth had long ago closed, but she still looked very much the same. Her dark brown hair was braided down to her waist, just like the day they first met, and her skin was tan from years in the sun.

"Magda." His voice cracked on her name. He cleared his throat, shook his head, and tried again. " _Magda_?" She confirmed her identity with a beaming smile, and threw her arms out to accept his sudden and enthusiastic hug. He gathered up her lithe body as close to his own as he could, and burrowed his nose into the side of her neck. "Magda," he whispered.

"I've missed you," she murmured in Polish into the curve of his ear.

"And I you," he replied back in German.

* * *

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	13. September, 1998: Part Two

**September, 1998: Part Two**

* * *

They didn't call attention to the obvious _thing_ that overwhelmed the both of them. It settled, unspoken, into a solid warmth in their bellies and an ignition of light in their eyes. It sparked across their fingertips when they connected their hands in a snug grip and pulled their lips into delighted smiles. Instead of speaking, Erik simply slid from his stool and towered a full head above Magda. He paid for his drink without looking at how many American twenties he placed atop the bar, and gently tugged her along to the exit.

Outside, the frigid evening air translated into gooseflesh on their bare arms. Erik lifted his free hand up, fully prepared to hail down a taxi to his hotel, but Magda placed a warm palm on his bicep and told him that her apartment was actually within walking distance. Later, he would realize that he would have never noticed if a cab pulled up or not anyway; he couldn't tear his eyes from her's.

So, they walked hand in hand down block after block, exchanging fond glances and tender smiles. Despite a chasm of years since having seen one another, surprisingly few words passed between them. She told him she had recently moved to New York for schooling.

"I want to teach," she had declared proudly, her chin lifted in the air almost defiantly, as if one too many people had criticized her choice.

Erik had only blinked. "Okay," he replied back with a smile. "Then teach."

Her hand squeezed his a little tighter after that.

He told her that he was playing professional hockey with Germany, and that his team was currently in New York for a combined training session with the Americans. A raised brow was the only indication of her surprise, but she made no remark. She had always thought he would become an engineer or welder.

In lieu of a reply, she took in the rough edges he had incurred over the years: the crinkles around his eyes, and the seemingly permanent line in his forehead. There was a small, bare patch on his upper lip; an indication in the light stubble that it was a scar. Another scar lie slanted inward on his chin: a thin, white and raised mark. She couldn't help but feel he looked so much older than he truly was.

Neither knew how much time had passed before they finally reached her apartment. The building wasn't much to take in as it was. It was three stories high, made with dirt-ingrained beige bricks and dark stone, with one rusted fire escape precariously attached to the front. It didn't look like the type of place that was safe. Erik didn't much care, but he found himself sticking a little closer to Magda's side as they shambled past trash-littered hallways and up to the third floor walk-up. She opened her door with shaky hands. He held it aside with one hand braced above her head.

Erik wanted to take the time to tour her apartment; to see what knickknacks she had placed atop the fireplace's mantle or stowed away within a bookshelf. He wanted to try out her unusually modern stove, and run a hand over the living room's sole brick wall. He wanted to see and touch and learn more about her via the place she had made her home, but Erik wanted to do that later.

Right now, Erik simply followed closely behind as she entered the combined kitchen and dining area. She allowed him to step around her as she turned back towards the door. The soft click of the lock was the starting pistol that had Erik stepping forward and brushing aside her thick braid of hair. He nuzzled at her neck with closed eyes. He wanted to inhale her scent, to smell what soap she used and to be consumed by her flesh, but the kitchen air was thick with onion and spice. He softly snorted against his skin.

Magda knowingly laughed as he pulled away to allow her to turn. She wrapped her arms around his middle in a tight embrace, and pressed her cheek to his chest. She sighed contentedly as he gently rested his chin atop her head. He pulled back so he could stoop low enough to rest his forehead against her own. He smiled so hard that his cheeks reddened and ached.

He placed a chaste kiss on the tip of her nose. She pulled him toward her bedroom.

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	14. September, 1998: Part Three

**September, 1998: Part Three**

* * *

Erik didn't know what to do with his damn hands. So, he raised them directly in the air. Magda chose that moment to look up from where she was trying to wrangle the zipper to his jeans down, and laughed so hard that she had to forgo the entire thing altogether. She clasped a palm over her mouth and shook her head.

"All right," he huffed out in his own amusement. "I'll get it myself." He grasped the denim with one unsteady hand as the other tugged the little tab down. Magda managed to compose herself long enough to gather the hem of her shirt so that she could pull it over her head. Erik hopped on one foot as he shucked his jeans completely. He tossed the pants aside and looked down at his feet.

"Socks? No socks?"

Magda, now shirtless, pressed a finger to her chin in thought. "No socks." She started to shimmy out of her own pants as Erik settled himself on the edge of her bed. He tugged off the black cotton and threw them aside as well. Magda turned and gave his still clothed upper torso a raised eyebrow.

"I was waiting for a helping hand," Erik said with a wry grin. Instead of replying, Magda reached around her back to unclasp her bra as Erik grabbed for the back of his white tee and tugged it off. "C'mere," he grunted when her bare breasts were released.

Magda stepped forward, a mixture of nerves and amusement battling across her freckled features. She stopped when her bare thighs made contact with his knees. Erik reached up with both hands and tucked loose strands of her frizzy hair behind her ears; his gray eyes searching her blue ones imploringly. When he didn't find any hint of apprehension, he cupped her face between his calloused palms, and brushed his thumbs across her cheekbones before he gently pulled her down to meet her lips with his own.

The first touch of flesh was chaste; he pulled away and bore his eyes again into her own. When she descended her lips to his for another, he opened his mouth and met her with more passion. She accepted with more ferocity than he gave her credit for, and soon after pulled away with a heaving chest and glistening lips.

Erik didn't need to be told to move up further onto the bed. Her eyes practically demanded it of him. He lie back, tugged the gray boxer-briefs (that did nothing to conceal the obvious length and girth of his cock) off his narrow hips, and used his elbows to pull himself to the bed's headboard. She removed her underwear, and followed suit. She made to lie on top of him, but Erik sat up and gently pushed her to the side and onto her back.

He lie beside her, his full weight on one arm as the other reached for her bare neck. His palm rested on her clavicle, searing hot in the cool bedroom, before he trailed it down between her breasts, over her stomach, and to the mound of dark hair that erupted from her pubic bone. He gathered some of the coarse strands between his fingers and toyed with them as his pinky and index finger sought something else.

Magda, eyes half-hooded and mouth open in a silent moan, shivered as his pinky brushed her clit. Erik grinned at her response before he retraced his trail with his palm once more until his hand rested at her clavicle again. He tilted her chin towards his with wet fingers, and met her lips in a passionate kiss.

He pulled himself up and over Magda, lean legs slotted over her right one as he rested his full weight on top of her. He shoved his right arm underneath her back as he pulled her as close as he physically could. His skin prickled with the beginnings of sweat as her smooth sheets wrapped around his shins, encasing them in unwanted heat.

His freed left arm caressed her side and grasped at her waist as he attacked her neck with open-mouthed kisses. She arched under his ministrations, digging blunt fingernails into his back as she wrapped her thighs around his hips and pulled him closer. He mashed his nose into her skin as he fought to even out his breathing. Stray strands of dark hair tickled his nostrils as he grimaced, baring his teeth as moistureless lips nipped at her flesh.

Erik had to remove his remaining arm from underneath her comforting weight in order to guide himself into her; they couldn't suppress twin moans of pleasure when he finally slid in. He rested his palms on either side of her head. His long fingers grasped and crumpled the sheet in his hands as he pulled his hips back and urged them forward again.

His arms burned and trembled as he held his weight above her. He pushed in and out, over and over again, until she let out a particularly breathy gasp. He frowned.

"Already?"

"No," she laughed breathlessly, "Cramp."

He bit his lip in amusement, and continued moving his hips.

Several minutes passed with nothing more than a few pleasured gasps and groaned phrases passed between them.

"I'm losing circulation."

"My foot is cramping."

"Oh, sorry!"

"Was that your eye?"

Erik's calves and thighs ached as muscles tightened up in an attempt to chase down an orgasm that seemingly eluded him. It built up and built up until one minute shift of the hips or stuttered thrust pulled him back from the brink in frustration. His only cues that he was doing something right were breathy moans and digging nails.

Finally, with panted breaths and sparks behind closed eyes, Erik burrowed his head into the curve of her neck and grunted as wave after wave of his orgasm left him depleted and sore. He used their combined sweat-slicked skin to slide off of her body and to her side. He placed a palm-down hand atop his heaving stomach, and rested the back of his other hand across his forehead.

"Did you come?" he asked.

"No," she sighed. She turned with a fond smile, gathered up the sheets to her breasts, and placed a chaste kiss to his temple. "But we have plenty of time to get it right."

Erik started to drift off in a drowsy haze of sleep, when an old memory sparked to life. He slowly sat up, ignored Magda's confused murmur, and leaned over the side of the bed. He fished around in the dark until he felt the denim of his jeans, and he yanked them off the floor when he managed to firmly grasp them. He reached into one of the pockets, and pulled out a bent coin. He threw the jeans back to the floor, and settled himself at Magda's side again. He offered her the coin between two fingers with an almost shy smile.

"Someone told me to wait until we found one another again."

She kissed him in response.

* * *

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	15. October, 1999

**October, 1999**

* * *

Erik pulled his thin lips into a severe frown.

He pouted, and then huffed in dejection before he pulled them back into a beaming grin that bared all of his teeth. When the appropriate reaction wasn't solicited, he chewed on his bottom lip in thought before he pulled both of hands up to his face, covered his eyes, then quickly pulled them away. He repeated the movement a few more times, exaggerating the raise of his brows and a offering a soft gasp again and again.

"Nothing," he moaned into the crook of his arm.

"She's only four months, Erik, give her time."

Erik sighed as he placed his chin on the tabletop, and leveled his gaze to his daughter's eye line. She stared back with her mother's bright, blue eyes. Erik dejectedly lifted his head, and glumly shoved a tiny, plastic spoon into a container of apple sauce. He offered it to the little girl's firmly closed lips.

"She doesn't like me," Erik complained. Magda laughed from where she stood by the sink, hand-washing the dishes despite Erik's demands to use the dishwasher he had just bought her.

"Anya Ruth Lehnsherr," Erik started firmly, "You _will_ eat this applesauce, and you _will_ give your favorite papa a smile."

The baby frowned, lower lip pushed out and little brows puckered in the middle, before she waved a bracelet-clad arm in the air and effectively knocked the entire spoon out of her father's hand. Erik ruefully watched as the spoon clattered to the floor and splashed bits of sauce on his trouser-clad leg. Magda's laughter was a little heartier this time around.

Anya's wobbly head turned to her mother's sudden laugh, and a playful coo erupted from her lips as she banged sauce covered hands atop the plastic tray of her highchair. Magda smiled fondly at Erik's pout as she placed her last plate in the dish rack. She wiped her pruned hands with a hand towel before coming forward and picking up the gurgling baby.

"Hello, sweetie," she cooed before placing a chaste kiss on Anya's dark hair. She transferred the baby to her hip so that she could carefully grasp the bracelet her daughter was bestowed. "Looks like we didn't completely escape the sauce-capade."

Erik placed an elbow on the table, and rested his chin within his hand as he watched his wife and daughter interact. He almost didn't give Ruth's bracelet to his daughter, but Magda had convinced him that it was something his late sister would have wanted. Although Ruth would have been delighted enough by the fact that his child was named after her.

"Well, ladies," his affection-coated words ringing out in the near quiet of their home, "Papa needs to make sure his bags are packed."

Magda looked up in surprise. "I forgot."

Erik smiled warmly. "It will only be a few days." He bent over to grab the spoon from the floor, before standing up and walking behind his wife. He still clasped the utensil in his hand as he wrapped his arms around Magda's middle, and rested his chin on her shoulder. He placed a small kiss on her neck before settling back again. "But I will miss you both fiercely, all the same."

Magda sighed, offering a small jounce of her hips to keep Anya preoccupied. "We will miss you very much."

They stood together for several minutes, content to listen to one another breathe and watch Anya play with strands of her mother's frizzy hair with stubby fingers. Magda murmured affectionately to her child in her usual, Polish tongue; her cheek pressed to the side of Erik's face.

"Don't you think she'd be confused by the two of us speaking two different languages?" Erik finally asked after a moment longer. "I speak German, and you Polish. Should we pick only one?"

"No," Magda replied back. "She will be taught all the languages we know."

"Okay, Mrs. Lehnsherr," Erik conceded with a smile. "Wish me luck at our match?"

"Good luck, Mr. Lehnsherr." She turned her head for an awkwardly placed kiss. "Kick some ass."

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	16. December, 1999

**December, 1999**

* * *

Erik didn't believe in kismet whimsies or anything in relation to it. He was fully aware that the good things in life didn't always last, that things that held meaning decayed, and that loved ones eventually (or prematurely) died. Erik believed in his religion, in God, but he was also a pragmatic man. He knew that good things, and good people, came to an end.

He could recall a conversation he once had with Magda, the first time he brought her to his home in Germany after their chance meeting in America. He had let her in, and watched in curiosity as she touched empty picture frames with a sad smile. They had made love, and after, in the dead of night with nothing but the moon in their window as their sole source of light, they sipped hot tea and talked about anything and everything.

Then she saw it. It was brown, with curled and crisp leaves, and fragile to the touch. It was long past due the need for water, neglected in Erik's lack of attention. She gingerly touched a leaf, and watched as it crinkled and fell to the crumbling soil underneath.

"I'm not very good at taking care of things," Erik had admitted over his steaming mug.

"Nonsense," Magda had said back with a soft smile. "I'll show you how."

He was right in the end.

* * *

It was exactly 11:58 at night, according to the ticking clock that Erik loathed. It was nailed to the wall above the television set, and never failed to catch Erik's eye despite the fact that it wasn't anything remarkable in appearance. It was a damn clock.

Erik hated it. Magda loved it. So, it stayed right where it was.

The soft _tick, tick, tick_ was only just drowned out by a overwhelmingly faux laughing track on the television. Erik tiredly grabbed for the remote by his side, unable to see much of anything that the over-saturated screen didn't illuminate. He finally wrapped his fingers around hard plastic, and muted the volume instead of turning it down.

That was when a horrific scream tore through the air. Erik's heart jumped in fear as he pushed himself off the couch. He ran towards the screams, towards the warbled unintelligible words, as he shouted back his wife's name in confusion and panic.

He stopped in the doorway to his daughter's bedroom; his shoulder protesting in pain from how hard he used it to stop his momentum. He couldn't see any blood, or any obvious signs of a break-in or intruder. He could only see his wife's back turned towards him, her body hunched over whatever she clutched to her chest.

Finally, finally when she turned round to face him, his motionless daughter in her arms, did her screams finally make sense: "Erik! Erik, she's not breathing. My God, she's not breathing! Help! Do something! Erik, do something!"

Erik stepped forward in confusion. He felt detached from himself. It wasn't something he could understand. Something he couldn't comprehend. He gathered his daughter from his distraught wife and stared down at the still chest, the blue lips, the blood-drained face.

* * *

His silver watch said it was 2:31 am. It had been exactly two hours and six minutes since the doctors had declared their little Anya deceased. He had been solemn faced three minutes into their arrival at the hospital, holding Ruth's ( _no_ Anya's) bracelet in his hand. Erik had shook his head in disbelief; Magda had sagged against Erik before she fell to the ground. She wouldn't stop screaming.

He could only half hold her as his knees crumpled beneath him. He fell with her; she was nonsensical, he was stunned. He didn't remember if the tears on his cheeks were his own or Magda's. Or maybe they were drops of melted snow from outside? He _would_ always remember the stark, white snow. And blue. He would always remember the color blue.

He wouldn't remember rustling papers, beeping machines, overlapping voices, phones ringing, IV stands squeaking as they rolled pass or even Magda's screams.

He _would_ remember the white-noised vacuum of silence.

He _would_ remember the Star of David deeply imprinted into the palm of his hand from how hard he clutched his father's handcrafted bracelet. His sister's bracelet. His daughter's.

Erik doesn't remember being sedated.

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 **TBC...**

 **Please Review.**


	17. January, 2001

**January, 2001**

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The time rolled one minute past midnight, and the twins were officially six months and one day old. Magda pulled her aching, tired eyes away from the alarm clock and looked down to where the little babies slept by her side. She breathed a deep sigh of relief as their small chests rose and fell in tandem. She had yet to turn off the lamp on the end stand, afraid she'd miss one little hiccup or something more. Something worse.

She hadn't known that she was pregnant with the twins when Anya had passed away. She could remember that the week before she was due for her monthly cycle, but it wasn't something that was of any import when they had to physically wrestle her away from a despondent Erik, who had not been reacting in the way Magda had thought he should. They broke the news to her after some blood work was done. It was uncomfortable on their part, to say the least. She could see that they wanted to be happy for her, but they didn't know how to quite react. She couldn't blame them; her own confusion was a mixture of unadulterated grief and wondrous joy. It was a feeling she had never wanted to have ever again. She never knew how Erik took the news.

Erik wasn't on his side of the bed. Again. He hadn't been for several days now. Magda couldn't recall if he said he was in training or attending another match – she could never remember what months they played and when they didn't. She didn't much care. She missed her husband.

And he desperately missed his daughter.

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"Erik, would you _please_ do something to help for once!" Magda raked a hand through her unruly hair in desperation. Pietro wailed from where he sat on her hip, one chubby hand clutching her shirt as another waved in the air. Wanda echoed her brother's cry from where she sat up in a playpen. Magda could feel her own tears of frustration as they began to well up in her eyes.

Her husband emerged from the guest bedroom; face stony and gray eyes transfixed on the watch he was in the process of putting on. He flicked them over the bawling infants with nothing more than a grimace. "I'm late, Magda." He looked away as if ashamed. "They need me right now."

"I need you!" She would have thrown something in her desperate anger if her hands weren't full of wriggling Pietro. "Damn you, Erik. They're your children too!"

A flash of indignation marred his lips into a frown. "So you keep saying."

Magda couldn't help but feel that the twins could have used that moment to stop crying for dramatic effect. They didn't, of course, but the silence was felt deep in her chest. She inhaled slowly, before she hoisted Pietro a little further up her hip. "Excuse me?"

"You heard what I said," Erik replied lowly. His eyes met hers unflinchingly.

"You don't believe they're yours?" She nearly laughed in her disbelief.

His lack of a reply was more than enough of an affirmation.

 _Oh_ , she thought, _that explains so much. He doesn't look at them. He doesn't speak to them. He barely touches them. It makes so much sense._

"You _don't_ think they're yours?" Her raised voice did nothing to quell the twin's raucous squall. "How could you even think that, Erik? How could you believe I would do something like that? And with who? And _when_ , Erik? Before Anya's death? _After_?" She couldn't keep the hysteria from her tone.

Erik was swift in his movements. In the blink of an eye, he was nearly nose to nose with her. His gray eyes were wide; wounded, and wet with unshed tears. She stood frozen, transfixed by the sight of her tight-jawed, red-faced husband as he physically struggled to keep his clenched fist raised in the air. He trembled with the sheer energy.

The sudden silence was swift and untimely, but it allowed for Magda's whispered, "You've become a monster," to be heard loud and clear. The slam of the front door as he left was just as thunderous.

* * *

The alarm clock blared a bright red 1:01 in the morning, and Magda had yet to fall asleep. She looked down at the twins, both curled and completely unconscious just inches from her stomach. She placed a loving hand atop Pietro's silver-haired head (a genetic mutation of some sort, according to the doctor's, possibly due to the fact that they were born slightly premature.) He didn't stir under her touch. She didn't do the same for Wanda, having learned the hard way that the little girl was sensitive to touch, but she leveled an equally loving look in her direction.

The front door opened and closed. Magda closed her eyes and feigned sleep as Erik attempted to pick his way through the front hallway and toward one of the bedrooms in silence. He failed miserably when he tripped over a singing child's toy. Magda risked a look to the twins. Still out.

Eventually, Erik made it to their bedroom. He crept in, shucking his shirt and shoes by the dresser before he climbed into the bed. The mattress dipped under his added weight, and the room filled with the stench of alcohol and stale cigarettes. He spooned Magda from behind, his mouth foul and hot against her skin.

"I'm sorry," he drunkenly whispered against the nape of her neck. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry." His voice sounded odd, nasally and slurred, and she realized he must of broken his nose. She wondered about what other injuries he carried tonight (in the light of the morning she would see his blackened eye, skinless knuckles, and scratched face.)

Instead, though, all she felt was his arm wrapping around her middle for the first time in months. He pulled her close, and she relished in the warmth and the weight. He clasped her hand tightly, and placed a light peck to her shoulder before he drifted off to sleep.

She couldn't help but notice that he never touched the twins.

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 **TBC...**

 **Please Review.**


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